I Blame Linus

[Parsious]

Soo as the walrus said "The time has come" ... and the thoughts are rattling about in my head to do a new build. My current system is a 4th gen i7 with 16Gig of ram and a GTX960 and honestly its getting to the end of its useful life.

 

This will be the first time that I am planning to build a rig that is meant to be seen and watching the LTT madness has reignited my love of Orange, much to my GF's amusement. So yep I blame Linus for that.

 

The pans for the color scheme here is Dark Grey with Orange accents for POP. and other than that I am looking for ideas that will compliment the Colors and what will end up being a very geometric style.

 

The first Components have been ordered and I'm trying to make the final decisions to round out the build now so far the only things that are locked in are:

• CPU : I7 - 8700K
• Motherboard : Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 obviously in Z370
• PSU : Corsair HX850i - this will get custom sleeved / length cables
• HDD : Seagate Barracuda Pro - 6TB
• Memory : Intel Optane 32GB

Plans in the works for other components are:

• SSD : M.2 - 480GB to 512GB of any make that's not Samsung -- then when the main part of the build is complete ill look at adding a second for some raid 0 goodness
• non Optane Memory: 32 GB (2 x16) of at least 3600 speed perhaps even RGB 

initial cooling is going to be air for the Graphics card and a 240 AIO for the CPU but in the end as I mentioned above is a Custom hard line water loop and im waiting to see the Priochill Vue fluid but I am thinking the color there will be some kind of "Slate Grey \ Silver \ Graphite" fluid and Orange Fittings.

 

things that are completely up in the air are the Video card and Case.

 

So with the video card I'm unsure what I want, if I was at all rational about spending on this PC's I would happily admit with the use My PC gets and the games I play all that is really needed is a GTX-1050, but well the chances of me not at least getting a GTX-1070 is admittedly slim to none and I might even end up with a 1080Ti but SLI is right out of the question. So the next question for the graphics card is manufacturer, untill now in my heart of hearts i have been a bit (lot) of an admitted ASUS fanboy but with this build being as much about form as function I have to take that into account.

 

Case is where things get really involved. I'm a Telecommunications engineer with a fairly strong background in mechanical engineering and full access to a fairly comprehensive workshop. So the question is do i use something off the shelf with some modding (likely a fair bit), or do I go full retard and build my own case. I have some ideas in mind after seeing the Cougar Conquer and really loving the open frame design. being as I plan to put a full custom loop with blocks on both CPU, GPU and in the end if needed and a block comes out some kind of VRM \ chipset coverage in this means that the cooling / airflow problem that I could get from an open case and air cooling really shouldn't be an issue.

 

so the things that I like about the cougar case is the off-axis Motherboard, the clean lines that are at really eye pleasing angles and the nice solid Glass side panels, oh and it comes in Dark grey and orange to start with. The things I'm not such a fan of. Really not a lot, basically from reviews that i have watched about it the list is:

• the HDD/SSD mounting is ... limited
• front and top fans are restricted to 120MM and Rad support is limited to 2 - a 360 in the top and a 240 in the front.
• and the only part of the look that I'm not really enamored with is the Front panel and that's more of a form than function issue.
• i would like to be able to put in some kind of 5-1/4 bay - controller / info panel  in with some kind of drop down cover over the USB ports.

I will admit that this list other than the drive mounting issue is getting picky and that the drive mounting is easy AF to deal with with an aftermarket tray, some screws and rubber grommets.

 

if anyone out there has any thoughts I'm happy to read them.

 

Cheers

 

 

[Sevarsuab]

Isn't it that if a SSD RAID 0 crash due to drive failure, the other drive might end up damaged? Or is your economy strong enough to not care about that?

[MorganO]

20 minutes ago, Parsious said:

SSD : M.2 - 480GB to 512GB of any make that's not Samsung

 

why not samsung

[DocSwag]

Why an optane ssd? IMO, they're pretty much useless...

 

Also, what is this pc for? Because if it's just gaming, NVMe SSDs aren't a waste of money.

[Parsious]

5 minutes ago, KOMTechAndGaming said:

why not samsung

I have some issues with Samsung products which are not in any way based in anything rational ... i just wont buy Samsung anymore ....

[RoryDash]

2 minutes ago, Parsious said:

I have some issues with Samsung products which are not in any way based in anything rational ... i just wont buy Samsung anymore ....

That's fair, Corsair make some good SSD's

[Parsious]

1 minute ago, DocSwag said:

Why an optane ssd? IMO, they're pretty much useless...

 

Also, what is this pc for? Because if it's just gaming, NVMe SSDs aren't a waste of money.

Optane because its about AU$100 and I want to see what they are like. I have hope that they will be worth it ... and there is a third M.2 on the mother board ( more reason 1 than 2 )

 

as for what i do with the PC ... I play a fair amount of EVE Online for fun and when im not i do a lot of CAD stuff for work and Audio processing as a hobby.. so i think the SSD's for most of my workload with 6TB of slow storage will work well

[JoostinOnline]

6 minutes ago, Parsious said:

I have some issues with Samsung products which are not in any way based in anything rational ... i just wont buy Samsung anymore ....

They're top of the line.  Of course that also means they're the most expensive.  I'd suggest going with Crucial.  Their prices are fair, and they aren't that far behind in performance (as long as you don't get a budget drive).

Just now, Parsious said:

Optane because its about AU$100 and I want to see what they are like. I have hope that they will be worth it ... and there is a third M.2 on the mother board ( more reason 1 than 2 )

 

as for what i do with the PC ... I play a fair amount of EVE Online for fun and when im not i do a lot of CAD stuff for work and Audio processing as a hobby.. so i think the SSD's for most of my workload with 6TB of slow storage will work well

It's a wasted $100.  It will make zero difference.  Don't waste your money out of curiosity.  You might as well pay $100 for a piece of plastic that fits in the slot.

[DocSwag]

6 minutes ago, Parsious said:

I have some issues with Samsung products which are not in any way based in anything rational ... i just wont buy Samsung anymore ....

Problem is, if you're looking at NVMe SSDs for the most part they're the only ones with ones worth buying...

1 minute ago, Parsious said:

Optane because its about AU$100 and I want to see what they are like. I have hope that they will be worth it ... and there is a third M.2 on the mother board ( more reason 1 than 2 )

 

as for what i do with the PC ... I play a fair amount of EVE Online for fun and when im not i do a lot of CAD stuff for work and Audio processing as a hobby.. so i think the SSD's for most of my workload with 6TB of slow storage will work well

The main reason I have a problem with optane is that Intel has a built in Rapid Storage Technology that lets you use part of an ssd for caching. And since with caching you're usually limited by the hdd anyways it feels pointless to get optane instead of, say, a 128gb ssd and use half for storage and half for caching.

 

If those are your workloads, then NVMe might make sense.

[Parsious]

soo for those of you out their that  care i have done some more work on this build in pinning down the parts for the custom loop the plan for the moment is to do custom hard line with the bends being done with 45 and 90 Phanteks  fittings ... this is more an aesthetic thing rather than me worrying about the bends i do looking like shit. 

 

so the parts list for the loop 

• rad 1 360mm Alphaool st30 
• rad 2 240mm Alphaool st30 (one of these may be replaced with the x-flow version if it fits the loop layout)
• res Watercool HEATKILLER 150 D5 (this may need to be a 200 depending on the amount of free space in the case)
• CPU block Watercool HEATKILLER IV Pro 
• GPU block im undecided as yet but im picking this will likely be ELWB as they make the best looking blocks for cards 
• Tube. well its going to be hardline and probably PETG but I'm worried that 12mm OD may look lost in the case so that final decsision will be made at when i decide on the res size 
• Fittings Phanteks has been picked for the shape of them and the fact that i can easily mask off the small bevel areas and spray them the accent color of the case 

so yeah the build is now int the part gathering stage and that would be going a lot quicker if processors were available .... so far i have the motherboard, bulk storage drive, PSU and the case is on a courier to m as i type (but as i live in Australia and on the west cost at that the case is probably on a camel to cross the desert ..... have to love Australia post)

 

[Parsious]

So then, most of the main parts have arrived and everything has been assembled and its working well on an AIO and stock air for the graphics 

 

after much thought and soul searching i have made what i think is the bigest compromise to the original parts list and went for Samsung NVME SSD's mainly for performance reasons and i lowered the ram speed to 3000Mhz ... my god the price of ram these days 

 

so the final part list is https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/fqCgTH 

i also decided not to do a custom case this time as the Cougar Conquer finally grabbed my attention but having finished the build i can tell you all there there is not enough room between the back plate and the Glass side to fit a drive on any kind of mounting bracket so im still looking for a solution to that. 

all that needs to happen now id the custom loop and cables. parts will be getting ordered for that soon^(TM)  and i need to decide if i really want to put a aquero in it, most of that will be where the hell do i put it 

[brob]

@Parsious

 

RAID 0 behaves a bit differently with ssd than with hdd. In fact a study done a few years ago established that in many common situations, a single larger ssd performed as well or better than a RAID 0 array. Further, RAID 0 is inherently more fragile than a single unit. You would have been far better off getting a 1TB Samsung 960. Although I doubt you would see a real benefit from NVMe instead of SATA III drives. 

 

That said, since you have bought the drives consider not putting them in a RAID 0 array. Just use them as separate volumes.

 

 

[Parsious]

@brob 
 

I thought about one drive vs 2 and in the end the determining factor for the Raid0 was price.. with so many of the components in here being somewhat price inflated ... im looking at you ram and GPU with the 512Gig drives comming in at $368 each and at the time of purchase a 1tb was at $850. sure it was only a $114 diference in price but that allowed me to sneak the 32Gig of ram into my budget 

 

i have also thought about the 2 seperat drive thing instead of raid 0 and atm the main thing holding me back is traction (the PC is set up and running well ), i also really dont want to have to mess with diferent drives in windows other than mass storage ...

 

i cant be sure but i seem to remember the last time i tried to set up a folder mount for an NTFS parttion to try and mimic a single volume i had a real pain in the ass time trying to get a drive monted to what Windows sees as a system folder 

 

*** Edit **** i have also just noted that the pcpart picker link i listed here has the wrong prices for the SSD'3s in it ...